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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23129587">Into the Distance. A Fangorn Story</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormwood700/pseuds/wormwood700'>wormwood700</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 07:08:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,889</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23129587</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormwood700/pseuds/wormwood700</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>About a couple, a ranger and Fangorn Forest.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Into the Distance. A Fangorn Story</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="Default">
  <b>Into the Distance</b>
</p><p class="Default">
  <em>A Fangorn Story</em>
</p><p class="Default">Darkness spills like ink in water. During the light dozing-offs she calls sleep the house moves further into the night; sways and creaks like a ship caught between opposing currents. From the edge of the ancient trees, an owl-cry. The sound settles in her head, reverberates in her throat.</p><p class="Default">She lifts the child from the basket and sits down in the chair by the window. Opens the front of her dress to feed it, as the moon rises above the left shoulder of the forest. The child looks at her: the large eyes a set of concentric circles in amber and yellow enclosing a dark, pulsating centre. Meeting the gaze, she feels as if she’s about to fall headfirst into an unknown star system. To regain equilibrium, she holds the child away from her with outstretched arms until the small face distils into a set of discs—like a child’s drawing of an owl.</p><p class="Default">When the feeding is done, she puts the child gently back. She moves her hand across the downy forehead and along the small body. Past the rapid wingbeat of the heart down to the feathered fingernails. She delights in the blurred boundaries of its being.</p><p class="Default">With the child asleep she walks back to the window, leans her forehead against the glass.</p><p class="Default">She hears her husband’s restless footfall in the room below. He says sleep no longer come easily to him in their house on the edge of the ancient forest. Instead of the expansive landscape he’d sought, in which to work and create, he feels hemmed in.</p><p class="Default">
  <em> ***</em>
</p><p class="Default">
  <em>‘Breathing space,’ he said with a joyless laugh. ‘From breathing space to bait! Held inside the long look of distant trees, exposed and unpeeled by my own scent.’</em>
</p><p class="Default">
  <em>He stopped talking.</em>
</p><p class="Default">
  <em>       ‘No,’ he said, ‘no…nature is not to be utilised or interpreted according to human needs or fears.’</em>
</p><p class="Default">
  <em>The words were uttered in stiff monotone, as if read from a book.</em>
</p><p class="Default">
  <em>        ‘We are interlopers, really… ‘</em>
</p><p class="Default">
  <em>He looked at her as if asking for confirmation or support.  She cocked her tired head, as if in agreement—didn’t want to be seen to dismiss his panic-containing logic. Their eyes met and he took an abrupt step back.</em>
</p><p class="Default">
  <em>        ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘don’t look at me like that!’ </em>
</p><p class="Default">
  <em>It took her a couple of seconds to get up and leave the room. A couple of seconds before she pulled her eyes away from his white face, swallowed her anger and closed the door on the smell of fear oozing off him.</em>
</p><p class="Default"> <em>***</em></p><p class="Default">They’d come her to work. Both are carvers and both are weavers; skilled with loom and knife.</p><p class="Default">They came from the same community, had known each-other since they were young. Marriage seemed a sensible option, with every expectation that it would also turn out pleasurable. With so many common denominators any sign of real difference is often ignored or suppressed.</p><p class="Default">They spent the first five years in balanced partnership. Encouraged each other, taught each other, even if their creations differed. She did close ups, he did distances. She wove and carved bird heads, birdwings, bones, leaves. He did lines of trees, mountains animals in the distance, large skies. He used to say that distances were safer, more accurate. Close ups distorted things. She didn’t agree. You knew where you were with close ups, but never what lay hidden behind those trees, below the horizon line, under the hills. But their different approaches appealed to people. They were successful, and amassed a certain wealth, enough to get by on, enough to take a step back for a while.</p><p class="Default">Because they’d come to a halt.</p><p class="Default">At first, they tried to ignore it, but between them creative work became harder, words fewer and touch more or less ceased. It was his suggestion to move away, rekindle whatever needed rekindling. He’d heard about a house in good order about to become empty, on the outskirts of Fangorn Forest. When he raised it with her, hesitantly breaking the now regular morning silence, she found herself nodding in agreement.</p><p class="Default">Fangorn had a reputation: of stirring things up, of ruffling minds, and that was of course the point, even if none of them put words to it. Rekindling needs more than a change of firewood.</p><p class="Default">***</p><p class="Default">A ranger came to the village as they were getting ready to move. Most people kept a distance to the rangers, even though open hostility was rare. However, there were houses where the rangers felt welcome and would revisit—theirs was one. They took pride in being a fixed point on the rangers’ map, as for their parents and grandparents before them. They knew a different side to them than the severe and gnarled men that appeared unannounced and disappeared equally unannounced. Men happy to share a laugh, a meal, a drink and a story.</p><p class="Default">The ranger arrived as twilight gathered around trees and stones, blurring the boundaries between worlds. She was alone, her husband at market to sell some of their carvings and tapestries, the last such expedition before the move. She opened the door to a ragged and exhausted-looking figure, swaying unsteadily, reeking of fatigue, fear and hunger. Concerned she took hold of his arm and helped him inside the house. It didn’t occur to her to be frightened.  She knew the physical signature of a ranger; it was part of her inheritance.</p><p class="Default">Up close his eyes looked wild and haunted, like an animal after a chase. He tried to form words of greeting but managed only shaky wheeze. She led him to a chair in front of the fire and brought him a bowl of soup. She made sure the bowl was not too hot or too full before she placed in his unsteady hands. Then she brought cheese and something strong to drink. She left him to gather himself, while keeping an eye on him; sensing he needed time to calm his mind, shake off the terror that had stalked him. After a couple of hours, he seemed better, less pale and depleted. Although he still looked gaunt, as if he hadn’t eaten properly for weeks. He put his cup down and called out to her. Expressed his gratitude and told her his name. <em>Halbarad</em>.</p><p class="Default">She liked his voice. It had the melodious northern twang common to all the rangers she’d met. This one, and his name, was new to her, but time didn’t leave its mark on the rangers at the rate it did on other people. He may have known both her mother and grandmother, looking much the same to them as he did to her.   </p><p class="Default">Halbarad had finished eating and looked around the room above the rim of his cup. His eyes paused at one of her small tapestries; a, still unfinished, picture of an owl. She was working on the eyes, overlapping hues of amber, yellow and brown tumbling towards a black pinhole centre.</p><p class="Default">            Then his eyes moved on to a large tapestry pushed into the far corner of the room. Blues and greys and greens. Long spiky shadows loomed far in. It could be people; it could be trees.</p><p class="Default">            ‘Did you make these?’ he asked.</p><p class="Default">            ‘I did the close ups,’ she said, ‘my husband does distances.’</p><p class="Default">            Halbarad smiled.</p><p class="Default">           ‘Sounds practical. As long as there’s a middle ground somewhere.’</p><p class="Default">         She gave him an uncertain smile back and looked down at her hands. The she resumed talking, about other things. Halbarad likely needed the warmth of human chatter as well as the heat from a fireplace—to shed the burden of isolation he must have carried for a while. She continued talking as she was about to get up to make a bed for him. Told him about their moving plans and Fangorn Forest. He jolted awake and gave her a searching look as if he wanted to say something. She stopped talking. He emptied his drinking cup and she refilled it for him, waited. In the end he said in a low, slurred voice:</p><p class="Default">           ‘Don’t cut it, gather loose firewood only….’</p><p class="Default">He fell asleep in the chair as he was talking, the empty drinking cup clattering to the floor.</p><p class="Default">She stripped her husband’s bed, rushes and all and made Halbarad a comfortable place to sleep in front of the fire. She nudged him gently and he rose from the chair and collapsed to his knees on the bedding.</p><p class="Default">             She woke in the middle of the night, her mouth dry, as if she’d been talking in her sleep. Got out of bed and moved her long shadow quietly past the sleeping man. She drank several cups of water from the pitcher near the front door. When she walked back, she felt the ranger’s eyes on her despite her efforts to keep her footfall light.  The fire was about to go out, and she crossed the room to feed it. He followed her movements with his grey eyes, simultaneously distant and focused, saying nothing. It struck her that he wasn’t completely awake, just always keeping a part of his mind alert. Perhaps he found the outline of her movements in front of the fire soothing, a tranquil space between him and whatever had brought him here. When she turned, he’d moved on to his side, facing away from her.</p><p class="Default">Back in her own bed, she felt a now rare pleasure of being seen and trusted, to be found worthy of someone’s trust. Her husband no longer trusted her, or rather he didn’t trust the two of them. A while back, at the close of yet another silent day he’d said that unless they could change things, he saw their future together like a dry grassland, nothing moving, nothing happening, where even the distant shadows had been rubbed out. She’d been upset by the bleakness of that picture, but later came to reject it. For all that was wrong between them, what they had, what they’d been, what <em>she</em> was, didn’t deserve that description. She wondered if it was in fact his own inner landscape he was describing, and that worried her.</p><p class="Default">Halbarad stayed for the next two days. He still needed time to recover and had letters to write, weapons to mend. She found she liked having him around, felt at ease in his company. While he was writing, she worked hard on her tapestry — to complete the eyes of the owl. She added or removed threads in the weave until she felt the bird looking back at her. She always felt deep pleasure when what she had created returned her gaze. She didn’t need to include a pair of eyes for the gaze to be there.</p><p class="Default">Towards evening she made a hot meal from tubers and dried meat. When they sat down to eat Halbarad started talking, his voice low and soft. He looked straight ahead rather than at her.</p><p class="Default">            ‘We work in pairs, if we can,’ he began, ‘one reason for that is to keep the other sane. However, a week ago I found myself alone through circumstances I won’t go into. I was running low on food and strength, and then I was attacked.  I managed to slay my attacker, but when his body hit the ground, dread hit back at me. And I ran. Strange things happen when you’re in the clutches of fear. You feel the forest closing in, feel something is after you; aiming for your body with claws and teeth. A quick glance backwards reveals nothing, but still you run. Sometimes fragments of music and song brush your ear, as if someone is trying to beguile you to stop.’</p><p class="Default">            Halbarad paused and emptied his cup, and she refilled it for him.</p><p class="Default">            ‘Fear that darkens your mind like ink in water. I managed to preserve a sliver of sanity until I reached the forest edge and your village.’</p><p class="Default">            She looked at him as he was talking, and he turned his head around to look at her. The stone grey of his eyes bleaching to pale cloud around his pupils</p><p class="Default">            ‘That fear,’ she asked, ‘where does it originate?’</p><p class="Default">            ‘It’s fed by your mind,’ Halbarad said, ‘but the start cause can be hard to untangle. I heard a similar fear described once, long ago. A group of people I encountered far away from here, spoke of Pan; god of wild spaces, music and madness.’</p><p class="Default">The morning he left she gave Halbarad the completed owl tapestry, the eyes now like pools of rippling amber and black.</p><p class="Default">            ‘To empty your fear into,’ she said, ‘if it strikes.’</p><p class="Default">            Halbarad folded the tapestry into his sleeve and enclosed her hands inside the circumference of his long, scarred fingers.</p><p class="Default">‘I want you to know that Fangorn does not allow the kind of fear that hunted me inside its boundaries. When you move there, use your senses, align with the forest.  Get used to Fangorn looking back. For you can <em>feel</em> Fangorn watching. All nature looks back, but we don’t usually notice. If you do, the forest will look out for you…’</p><p class="Default">            Halbarad paused. ‘…in its own way. Fangorn knows no evil, but it is not human.’</p><p class="Default">            She nodded and swallowed.</p><p class="Default">            ‘Stop by us, for a meal and a rest, if you’re in those parts.’</p><p class="Default">            ‘If circumstances lead me there, I will.’</p><p class="Default">            He put his arms around her and held her—hard. Then he was gone.</p><p class="Default">***</p><p class="Default">In the beginning the move to the edge of Fangorn seemed to improve things. It was a thaw between her husband and her. They touched each other, slept together. When she found she was pregnant she expected things to improve further, but instead he started to pull away from her. Her loneliness returned. </p><p class="Default">In the beginning she’d kept to the vicinity of the house, but to ease that loneliness, she started moving beyond the forest boundary to explore the lush verdure behind; hesitantly at first. She noticed the outer line of trees changed subtly from one morning to the next. Where there had been a slight curve was now an almost straight line and vice versa. A large stone would be in shadow at noon one day, and in sunshine another, as if a background tree had taken a step to the side.</p><p class="Default">She followed Halbarad’s advice. Kept her senses open, tried to align with the forest and its sylvan mind. A mind so old it was beyond her comprehension. She found comfort in that, comfort from being surrounded by life forms that preceded her and would outlive her. And the scent of moss, earth and rotting wood. She sat with her back against one of the ancient trees, suffused with an emerald-tinted peace.</p><p class="Default">Over the months of her pregnancy a playful game of give and take developed between Fangorn and her. Each time she left to go home, the forest kept something of hers and left something of itself in its stead. Layers of wood, feather and pelt, a set of watchful eyes, a sliver of breath.  </p><p class="Default">            She began a new series of tapestries. In them the forest peered out. Branches like arms, pine needles and leaves like ruffled hair. Her husband looked at them with something akin to anger.</p><p class="Default">           ‘A furry mess,’ he called them.</p><p class="Default">          When she worked, he made carvings of remote trees. Deep slashes through the wood grain, nothing more. It frightened her when she felt him lift the carving knife behind her and aim it at the surface of the wood.</p><p class="Default">Her husband helped to arrange people to be present at the birth, but when the child had been born, he took just one look at it. Swiped its face with his eyes and turned and walked away. Then she realised he was getting lost, becoming remote from everything, including himself, including the beauty closest to him. The child, the forest – her.  </p><p class="Default">She took to sleeping upstairs with the child. In the evenings she held it by the open window while she sang. She directed her songs towards the forest; songs of both her pleasure and her fear.</p><p class="Default">***</p><p class="Default">She opens the window, her breath misting like pipe smoke in the frosty air.</p><p class="Default">
  <em>Soon he’ll feel the walls closing in, his throat constricting. The forest knows how it’s done.</em>
</p><p class="Default">Downstairs she hears loud scrambling footsteps and the front door banging shut.</p><p class="Default">A distance away she sees the scuttling shadow of her husband as it ripples across the snow-covered field. With her sharp ears she hears the creak of his shoes and the echo of his panting breath. He’s thin and elongated in the moonlight; arms and legs like twigs. He looks breakable, frail, like any creature out on their own. She smells the blood-rush through his flapping heart, the sweat freezing on his skin. Behind it all she senses the long, slow beat of Fangorn.</p><p class="Default">She looks on as he runs away from the house they’d shared. She watches until his diminishing form is rubbed out by the shadow of the trees. She watches as her tears flow, tears of loss and defeat, mixed with the sore relief of his leaving.</p><p class="Default">Fangorn has been looking out for her, but Fangorn is not human. The forest understands hunger, fear, loneliness, threat, but not the hurt of rejection, the sting of unrequited feelings, the grief at departure. Those are human feelings.</p><p class="Default">Tomorrow they’ll venture out, the child and her. They’ll find him soon enough.</p><p class="Default"> </p><p class="Default"> </p><p class="Default"> </p><p class="Default"> </p><p class="Default"> </p><p class="Default"> </p><p class="Default"> </p>
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